Tim Burton's "Dark Shadows" stars Johnny Depp as 18th-century vampire Barnabas Collins. Following are reflections on the original 1966-71 Gothic soap, compiled by
Star-Ledger staff writer Mark Voger, who has been pursuing cast interviews since 1990.

JONATHAN FRID

It's a good thing "Dark Shadows" creator Dan Curtis wasn't in New York when the role of gentleman vampire Barnabas Collins was cast.

"I doubt whether I ever would have been Barnabas if he had been there," said Jonathan Frid in 1990. (The actor died in April at age 87.)

"Because, he wanted somebody who was very aggressive, very macho and very strong. But while he was away, the mice played."

Frid collaborated with the show's writers to make Barnabas a tragic, romantic figure.

"There are no such things as heroes and villains, you know, and Barnabas was neither hero nor villain," Frid said.

"The variety of emotions and the complexity of Barnabas made him the most interesting character I've ever played, including Shakespeare. It was constantly fascinating and surprising to me what I was called upon to do.

"The press, of course, made it up to be just a guy with a couple of fangs biting everybody."

KATHRYN LEIGH SCOTT

The actress who played Maggie Evans, the reincarnation of Barnabas' love interest, compares "Dark Shadows" with "Star Trek," which debuted the same year.

Said Scott: "Gene Roddenberry went ahead in time and told universal tales. Dan (Curtis) did the same thing by going back in time and really borrowing from classic literature. The stories had a timelessness."

Another factor: the casting.

"Somehow or other," Scott said, "(Curtis) chose people who kind of rolled with the punches and never balked at doing things. We were almost like a summer stock group."

While on a vacation in the '60s, Scott became aware of the impact of "Dark Shadows."

Recalled the actress: "I went to Africa on a photographic safari. It was 4 o'clock in the morning and I was in the sonar plane watching a flight of lions feeding off a wildebeest. Another land rover pulled up, and there was a family. And a little girl said, 'Mommy! Look! Look! There's Maggie Evans!' "

LARA PARKER

The vengeful, and beautiful, witch Angelique hypnotized viewers by looking into the TV camera while casting spells.

"My eyes were my gift," said Lara Parker, who played Angelique.

"Everybody gets one. I was lucky to have big, blue eyes. They would change color with what I had on."

Said Parker: "Josette represented goodness. She was purity. She was that quality that was really the opposite of Angelique, who was evil, who was jealousy — the witch who was able to control the situation as she chose to.

"They kind of represented two sides of woman, you might say. The side that is capable of anger and resentment and bitchiness and manipulating other peoples' lives, which is really fascinating and challenging. And then the other side, which is the pure side, the virginal side. It's like the knowing woman and the innocent woman together."

DAVID SELBY

As 19th-century ghost Quentin Collins, David Selby didn't have much to say — at first.

"It was about three months before the character ever spoke," said Selby. "Of course, I was worried that once I opened my mouth, they won't want me!"

What the character did have was "Quentin's Theme," an instrumental that became a hit song in 1969.

"I found that was helpful," Selby said. "So that even before Quentin spoke, he had some sort of identity, some sort of mystery."

Also helpful for Selby was the way Quentin was styled.

"He had the long frock coat, which I thought was wonderful, and he had the sideburns," Selby said. "You know, he was a bit of a rogue. So I'm not sure why people have identified with him, but I'm grateful that they have."

But Selby doesn't question the appeal of "Dark Shadows."

"To this day, it's a world that you can escape to," he says. "It's not dependent upon technology or anything. It's just old-fashioned storytelling."

NANCY BARRETT

As Carolyn Stoddard, Nancy Barrett got to play a free spirit in the stuffy Collins family.

"She was a very '60s person," Barrett said. "She was clearly very rich. She was a little bit isolated and wanted to break out, like everybody in the '60s — they wanted to break out of whatever mold they had been cast in.

"I sort of understood this dame immediately. She just wanted to do everything there was to do in life."

As Carolyn, Barrett got to wear groovy hair and fashions.

"The clothes were kind of fun, but even more than that, I liked the 'period' stuff," Barrett said (referring to flashback characters she played such as Millicent Collins in 1795).

"There were some wonderful velvets and much more interesting clothing designed for the periods in the past. Carolyn was not as interesting to me as, say, Millicent, who had ringlets, which I never in my life had and always wanted. And, you know, the high collars and the long dresses. That was really dress-up time."

LOUIS EDMONDS

When he first signed on to play aristocratic Roger Collins, Louis Edmonds couldn't have guessed that his likeness would end up on merchandise such as trading cards.

"You don't mean, like, the baseball playing cards?" said the actor in 1997, when asked about the phenomenon. (Edmonds died in 2001.)

"If I saw them and don't remember them, it's because I saw a lot of them and they began to blur. You just accept that as part of the job. I think it would have been more fun if we had been paid for it. But I remember seeing all of it.

"Just as Jonathan (Frid), with his Barnabas thing — he must have gotten sick of seeing himself."

In "House of Dark Shadows," the 1970 film adaptation of the series, Edmonds got to do something he never did on the TV show: become a vampire.

"Oh, I was getting so bored being straight man during all the fun everybody else was having, turning into a vampire," he said. "I just rode right along with it."

JOHN KARLEN

As Willie Loomis — the handyman who sets Barnabas free after 171 years trapped in a coffin — John Karlen exuded a youthful, James Dean vibe.

"But I was not a kid, I'll tell you the truth," Karlen said. "I had been through the mill already by the time I hit 'Dark Shadows.' I'd done a half-dozen Broadway plays and all that kind of stuff. I was in the Air Force for four years. I was a lot older than I looked."

Karlen considered "Dark Shadows" to be a career break.

"I was lucky enough to have been playing Willie," the actor said. "I was only on once or twice a week. I didn't have to carry the load that Barnabas or a couple of the other people had to carry."

Karlen reprised Willie in the film "House of Dark Shadows."

"The movie was fun," the actor said. "Again, not carrying the load, I always had time to relax, have a good time. It was just an enjoyable shoot. I can look back on myself in that film and I like whatever I did. It just fit right into the whole picture of what it was."

JERRY LACY

Clutching a Bible and pointing the finger of guilt, witchhunter Rev. Trask was Collinwood's meanest citizen.

"You know, actors sometimes don't get a chance to play a real mustache-twirling villain like that," said Jerry Lacy, who played the bad reverend.

"The show was, of course, very melodramatic. So from that point of view, it was fun."

Lacy played Trask as someone who was utterly convinced he was on a sacred mission.

"He definitely believed it," Lacy said of the character.

"Of course, almost all actors, with any character they play, they have to find the truth in the character to make it work. So, yes, Trask positively believed that he was doing the right thing."

After joining the "Dark Shadows" cast, Lacy began being recognized on the street.

"It was my first soap opera," the actor said. "You know, the show was already going very strong when I joined the cast. I was forewarned that this would happen, and it did."

DIANA MILLAY

As Laura Collins, a reincarnated "phoenix" who returned to life every 100 years, Diana Millay played the first-ever supernatural character on "Dark Shadows."

Millay said she was very much aware that this was something new for soap operas.

"I won't say that we thought we were going to be some legend in our own time, but we felt it, yes," the actress said.

How did the cast and crew learn that the phoenix storyline resonated with viewers?

"We got the clue when the reception, immediately, was totally overwhelming," Millay said.

"We thought, 'Hey! What are we doing?' I believe that in this life, if you are around people who are incredibly compatible, and every single day everything works so smoothly, and everything goes like a miracle, and everything is a miracle — ah, there must be something special about what you're doing. And we knew that there was something special about what we were doing."

MARIE WALLACE

When "Dark Shadows" introduced its version of the Frankenstein monster, Adam, a mate soon followed. Eve, a manmade woman, was the first of three "Dark Shadows" roles played by Marie Wallace.

Recalled the actress: "When I first went in and was contracted to do Eve, I had no idea that there'd be any other part. And then when Adam killed me, I went off and did a play. And no sooner did I get back, they called me and said they had another part, would I like to play it? And so I did Crazy Jenny.

"When that was over — I think Quentin killed me on that one — some time passed. I think I did another play. Then I got the call for Megan Todd."

Her favorite of the three?

"There was something about (Jenny's) vulnerability that really was endearing to me."
Wallace, too, had a theory on the show's enduring appeal.

"There was something about the innocence back then," she said. "Even though at the time, we didn't think it was very innocent."

ROGER DAVIS

The live-on-tape "Dark Shadows" became famous — or infamous — for its bloopers. Roger Davis, who played a string of heroes on the show, has the distinction of being involved in one of the scant few bloopers that was so bad, it had to be reshot.

Recalled the actor: "Whenever I'm asked if I brought home any souvenirs from the show, I always say, 'I brought home an arm.' You see, the arm inside the box (a prop for a scene) was my arm. That was how we did it. They had a fake arm on the bottom of the box; it looked like it held the box. They had the box tied to me, so I could use the fake arm and I had my own arm in the box.

"But the first time we did it, when I lifted it up to choke (another actor), the box dropped! It was hanging off my arm! Well, we were taping, so we had to do it over.

"That's the only time that Dan (Curtis) would do it over. He would only do it over if it looked really bad. If you missed a line, you were out of luck."

DENISE NICKERSON

As Amy Jennings, Denise Nickerson became the on- and offscreen playmate of fellow child actor and "Dark Shadows" co-star David Henesy.

"We had a blast," Nickerson said of working with Henesy.

"We started a little restaurant on the set. We were charging 'em five bucks a day for a hot plate."

But not everything Nickerson and Henesy did on the set was quite so wholesome.

"We spent a lot of time in ('Dark Shadows' co-star) Joan Bennett's dressing room, smoking cigarettes," Nickerson said with a laugh.

"We could do that, because she wore Jungle Gardenia (brand) perfume, which is extremely intense. She bathed in it, practically. You could smell her way before you ever saw her. So her dressing room was a perfect place to smoke. You couldn't smell the smoke through the Jungle Gardenia."